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A Great New Blogger Disagrees with Corporate Reform–and with Me Too

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2014 //
39

This new blogger dissects Gerald Graff’s defense of the Common Core standards,and his second post says that I can learn a lot from Saul Alinsky.

The writer is a former high school teacher, who taught for many years in the Chicago public s hools.

Among other trenchant comments, he writes about Graff:

“Graff reduces education reform to a set of standards, but he’s not alone in doing so. He’s in good (loathsome?) company. In fact, he can now join the ranks of a long list of so-called education reformers, including our own Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, for whom the idea of actually teaching in our most difficult schools seems absurd. (His claim to his current post rests on the fact that his mother was a teacher.) This brings to mind a quip that made the rounds during the last CPS teacher strike: Those who can, teach. Those who can’t, pass laws (or write essays) about teaching.

“Of course, such a stance begs the question: How might Graff (or Gates or Duncan) feel if a group of folks, say a handful of successful people from outside their institution were to hijack their department or business or institution and tell them how they aught to run things? To take this a step further, why not apply the same logic that Graff deploys in his response to Ravitch to his own English department at UIC? According to Graff, in his own courses at UIC he sees evidence that the American education system has done little for “the great majority of students who are essentially confused about how to do academic work, about how to analyze a text and summarize its argument, or about how to make an argument of one’s own.” Then why doesn’t he simply compel his colleagues to raise their standards? Why doesn’t he just raise his own standards, for that matter?”

And in his advice to me, he knows I despise the “reformers'” efforts to disrupt the schools to impose their ideological and commercial agenda. So he writes:

“When it comes to creative disruption in our schools, though, I disagree with Ravitch. I understand that there’s a place and a time for stability in school; I understand that teachers and students need a space where they can think for themselves about their lives and decide what to learn and what to do. But now is not the time to dutifully follow the mandates in order to preserve some sense of stability and calm. It’s precisely because of the current instability in our schools that we have an opportunity to turn the tables on these reformers. By creating more disruptions, more chaos, and more upheaval, we can reset the reform agenda.

“And, this is the lesson of Alinsky. He reminds us that disorganizing communities can be a powerful tool; it’s exactly what so-called reformers like Arne Duncan, David Coleman, Michelle Rhee, and Joel Kline have been doing to teachers across the country. These people are disorganizing our schools and communities. They are running actions against us in order to make us feel powerless and disorganized. And, what’s worse, it isn’t just another empty exercise: this is real. They’re trying to change education forever. They want to hijack and narrow the curriculum. They want to give away public education to private corporations. They want to debase and deskill the profession of teaching. And, they want to reduce education to a test score.

“We can change this. Now is the time to organize and occupy our schools in order to disrupt and destabilize current reform efforts. We can go on the offensive—one grounded in creative disruptions that we design and produce. We can construct our own chaos and upheaval in ways that compel education reformers to stop what they’re doing and start listening to the people most affected by their decisions. And, as Diane Nash reminds us, we can opt out; we can refuse to participate in our own oppression.

“Only after we create enough disruption can we (students, teachers, parents, and community members) then demand the right to develop our own standards: ones that best address the needs, desires and aspirations of our communities, rather than the desires and aspirations of corporations and private foundations. Only then can we create stable schools that foster creativity and innovation, rather than conformity and obedience. Only then can we create schools that take as their starting point that building great schools and communities are reciprocal projects, not separate ones.”

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry

Philly Schools Offer Parents a Choice: Go Charter or Stay in Schools with No Resources

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2014 //
28

The Philadelphia public school district is being aggressively starved of resources by Governor Corbett and the Legislature, and its Broad-trained superintendent now proposes to shrink the district still farther to save money. He is offering parents a choice of converting to charter status or remaining in the district, where they cannot count on having a library, a school nurse, reasonable class sizes, the arts, basic supplies, or anything else. Thousands of teachers, school aides, nurses, social workers, and nurses have been laid off. This is reform-by-attrition. Last fall, a 12-year-old child died of an asthma attack in her public school in Philadelphia because there was no school nurse on duty that day, due to Corbett’s budget cuts.

Before Superintendent William Hite offers to turn more students over to charters, he should conduct an investigation of the charters and their records. Philadelphia was the first city to try a massive experiment in privatization in the early part of this century, an experiment that failed because the district schools outperformed the privately managed ones. Nearly a score of Philadelphia charters have been investigated by federal authorities for various kinds of misdeeds. What is their record? Who do they accept? Who do they refuse?

This is another sorry chapter in the ongoing privatization of American public education. A superintendent selected by an unelected board–a board appointed by the state–turning over more schools to private management.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Philadelphia, Privatization

Fact-Checking Eva’s Claims on National Television

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2014 //
41

This article, which I co-wrote with Avi Blaustein, an independent education researcher, was cross-posted on Huffington Post.

It explains that Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy charters do not serve the most disadvantaged students in New York City; that her school in Harlem (Success Academy 4) that will not expand is NOT the highest scoring school in the state; and that her schools have few, if any, of the highest-need special education students and a high attrition rate.

By Diane Ravitch and Avi Blaustein

The battle between NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and Eva Moskowitz, CEO of the Success Academy charter chain, has blown up into a national controversy, covered on national television, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

Mayor de Blasio had the nerve to award the Moskowitz chain only five of the eight charters that it wanted, and Moskowitz has been on the warpath to get all eight, even if it means pushing kids with disabilities out of their public school classrooms.

What is missing from the controversy so far is any interest on the part of the journalists in basic facts. Instead, what is happening is a public relations battle. Moskowitz has attacked Mayor de Blasio in multiple media appearances, and no one in the media has bothered to check any of her claims.

Let’s fill that gap.

On MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Ms. Moskowitz claimed that Success Academy 4 in Harlem is the “highest performing school in New York State in math in in fifth grade.” This is obviously an odd metric to use in judging a school. Picking out one subject in a single grade should raise suspicion among the media, but it hasn’t.

It is also not true. On the fifth grade state math test, the students at Success Academy 4 are, in fact, #8 in New York City (tied with another school) and presumably even lower when compared to schools across the state. The fourth grade math test scoresare #54 in New York City (tied with six other schools). The third grade math scores rank #63 in New York City (tied with 6 other schools). The school’s rankings are even worse in English. The fifth grade English test scores rank #59 in New York City (tied with seven other schools), the fourth grade English test scores rank #81 in New York City (tied with five other schools), and the third grade English test scores rank #65 in New York City (tied with eight other schools).

The school is not the “highest performing school in the state” in any grade.

Moskowitz’s interviewers have said that the students at Success Academy 4 are the “most disadvantaged kids in New York City,” to which she assented. She has said “it’s a random lottery school. We don’t know who they are.”

We do, in fact, know who the students at Success Academy are. They are not the most disadvantaged kids in New York City. Harlem Success Academy schools have half the number of English Language Learners as the neighboring public schools in Harlem. The students in Success Academy 4 include 15 percent fewer free lunch students and an economic need index (a measure of students in temporary housing and/or who receive public assistance) that is 35 percent lower than nearby public schools.

Moskowitz’s Success Academy 4 has almost none of the highest special needs students as compared to nearby Harlem public schools. In a school with nearly 500 students, Success Academy 4 has zero, or one, such students, while the average Harlem public school includes 14.1 percent such students. With little sense of irony or embarrassment, Moskowitz has attacked Bill de Blasio for preventing the school’s expansion inside PS 149. Her school’s expansion would have come at the cost of space for students with disabilities. The school has already lost “a fully equipped music room … A state-mandated SAVE room … A computer lab… Individual rooms for occupational and physical therapy … and the English Language Learners (ELL) classroom,” due to earlier Success Academy expansions in the same building.

Moskowitz said, referring to the students in her schools, “we’ve had these children since kindergarten.” But she forgot to mention all the students who have left the school since kindergarten. Or the fact that Harlem Success Academy 4 suspends students at a rate 300 percent higher than the average in the district. Last year’s seventh grade class at Harlem Success Academy 1 had a 52.1 percent attrition rate since 2006-07. That’s more than half of the kindergarten students gone before they even graduate from middle school. Last year’s sixth grade class had a 45.2 percent attrition rate since 2006-07. That’s almost half of the kindergarten class gone and two more years left in middle school. In just four years Harlem Success Academy 4 has lost over 21 percent of its students. The pattern of students leaving is not random. Students with low test scores, English Language Learners, and special education students are most likely to disappear from the school’s roster. Large numbers of students disappear beginning in 3rd grade, but not in the earlier grades. No natural pattern of student mobility can explain the sudden disappearance of students at the grade when state testing just happens to begin.

Moskowitz made a number of other claims during her Morning Joe appearance. She said “we are self-sustaining on the public dollar alone.” In fact, Success Academyspends $2,072 more per student than schools serving similar populations. This additional funding comes from donations by the very same hedge fund moguls who have donated over $400,000 to Governor Cuomo’s re-election campaign (charter supporters in the financial and real estate sector have contributed some $800,000 to Governor Cuomo’s campaign).

Moskowitz has said “in terms of cracking the code that’s what we’ve set out to do.” But we don’t need charter schools to crack the code if the cryptographic key is to keep out the neediest students and kick out students with low test scores. Public schools could do that too. Then they too would have higher test scores and a high attrition rate. They don’t do it because it would probably be illegal. And besides, it is the wrong thing to do. Public schools are expected to educate everyone, not just those who are likeliest to succeed.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Harlem Success Academy

Robert Shepherd: Here is FUD in Education

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2014 //
68

In an earlier post today, I described the use of FUD (fear, uncertainty,and doubt) to destroy public confidence in public education and thus pave the way for privatization. The vendors of FUD say our education system, which made this country great, is failing; that it is obsolete; that we are losing the global race. It is a massive hoax, a fraud, a lie. They want to frighten the public and open the door to privatization and profiteering.

Robert Shepherd shows how FUD works in the marketing of Common Core, which was created to address our allegedly failing schools. Just remember: our schools are NOT failing. Our society is failing to address the real crisis of our time, which is that nearly one-quarter of our children live in poverty, and many are racially segregated as well. The Commin Core won’t change those scandalous realities.

Shepherd, an experienced curriculum developer, writes:

“And be these juggling fiends no more believed,
That palter with us in a double sense

–William Shakespeare, Macbeth

According to the amusing Wikipedia article on the subject, agnotology is the intentional cultural production of ignorance. It’s what advertisers and the leaders of oligarchical states do. They manufacture ignorance in order to further their goals. When it became clear to the cigarette companies that their product was extremely dangerous to people’s health, they started running ads that read “9 out of 10 doctors agree, there’s not a cough in a carload.” That’s agnotology.

One of the primary means by which the agnotologist works is equivocation. Equivocation is a kind of lying that SOUNDS as though it might be true. To see agnotological equivocation brought to the level of a high art, you need but look no further than the webpage from the Common Core State Standards Organization (the CCSSO) that describes the “myths” surrounding the Common Core. Each “myth” described on the Common Core page and in other Education Deform propaganda is, in fact, the unspun truth. In other words, the Education Deformers are highly accomplished agnotologists. A few examples will illustrate their technique:

“The Common Core State Standards were developed by teachers”

means that teachers had almost nothing to do with them, that a few teachers were selected to rubber stamp work done by amateurs from outside the profession who were hired with money from plutocrats and given the task of hacking those standards together based on the lowest-common-denominator groupthink of the state standards that preceded them.

“The standards were freely adopted by the states”

means that the USDOE gave the states no choice but to adopt them or suffer severe penalties that would come from not getting NCLB waivers. The “State” in “Common Core State Standards” is, quite simply, a lie. The standards were not developed by states but by a PRIVATELY HELD pair of organizations that hold a copyright on them.

“The new standards will unleash powerful market forces to encourage innovation”

means that the national standards will create markets at a scale at which only monopolistic providers of unimaginative educational materials can compete. It means the Walmartization, the Microsofting of U.S. education. It also means that in due time the CCSSO and the National Governor’s Association, or NGA, will start using the legal system to control the market for educational materials by deciding what materials will and will not receive its OK to claim alignment with its PRIVATELY HELD standards.

“The states are free to adapt the standards as they see fit”

means that the states can’t change them at all, that the most states can do is to add a few, but very few, standards to the CC$$ bullet list. The number of standards added can be no more than 15 percent of the total, and otherwise, the standards must be adopted without change (and without any mechanisms for change in the future other than the whim of the private organization that created the standards to begin with).

“The plutocrats have no seat at the table where educational policy is made” (Arne Duncan)

means that a small group of plutocrats paid for and directed the creation of the standards, the revised FERPA regulations, the new VAM systems, and the USDE technology blueprint. It also means that those same plutocrats are providing a lot of the money that is going into the development and marketing of the new national online bubble tests. It means that education policy is being made based on what serves the financial interests of the plutocrats. It means that the current deforms are the plutocrats’ business plan.

“The standards are not a curriculum”

means, in math, that they are a curriculum outline and in ELA that a) they dramatically narrow the possibilities for curricula and b) contain a great many items that clearly do specify curricula

“The standards don’t tell you how to teach” or “The standards do not specify pedagogical approaches

means that some pedagogical approaches are required in order for the standards, as worded, to be met and that MOST APPROACHES that might be conceived by independent teachers, scholars, researchers, and curriculum developers are precluded.

“The new national tests introduce breakthroughs in question types in order to test high-order thinking”

means that some minor online variants of fill-in-the-blank, matching, ordering, and other stock bubble test questions types have been introduced. So, for example, instead of filling in a blank, the student clicks on and moves an item to a blank.

“US schools are falling behind on international tests, thus making the standards and new national assessments necessary,”

means that US schools appear to be performing poorly if one does not correct for the socioeconomic status of the kids taking the test. If one does correct for SES, US schools and students lead the world.

“The Secretary of Education is the chief officer of the national public school system”
means that he is the fellow whom the oligarchs have put in charge of dismantling that system and replacing it with online and brick-and-mortar charters, voucher systems, and private schools run by well-connected profiteers.

“We’ve seen great improvements due to the accountability system put in place by NCLB”

means that scores have been almost flat and that the more than a decade of standards-and-testing that was supposed to “Leave no child behind” hasn’t worked at all to change overall outcomes or to put a dent in the achievement gap.

Poverty is not destiny”

means that the powers that be are going to ignore poverty and use the whips of VAM and testing instead.

So, agnotology, and, in particular, agnotology via equivocation, has become the PRIMARY MEANS OF GOVERNANCE of our K-12 educational system. In other words, our national education policies are, cynically, being formulated and enforced via LIES and, in particular, via means of that variety of LYING known as EQUIVOCATION.

And the leaders (LIARS) doing this governance are counting on having made the public so ignorant, via such equivocation, that it will not oppose their complete circumvention of democratic processes.

They are counting on the fact that their plutocrats, the guys with the checkbooks, can buy all the PR that is needed to keep the people in ignorance.

That’s how things work in a banana republic. The plutocrats purchase the political muscle to carry out their plans. In time, that muscle, the leaders/liars don’t even try to hide the fact that they are lying. They do it completely shamelessly. In fact, being able to lie shamelessly without having anyone call you out on it is a sign of enormous power, and to such people, to quote Kissinger’s infamous line, “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

Understanding the Propaganda Campaign Against Public Education

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2014 //
48

A few years ago, when I was blogging at Education Week with Deborah Meier, a reader introduced the term FUD. I had never heard of it. It is a marketing technique used in business and politics to harm your competition. The term and its history can be found on Wikipedia. FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. The reader said that those who were trying to create a market-based system to replace public education were using FUD to undermine public confidence in public education. They were selling the false narrative that our public schools are obsolete and failing.

This insight inspired me to write “Reign of Error,” to show that the “reform” narrative is a fraud. Test scores on NAEP are at their highest point in history for white students, black students, Hispanic students, and Asian students. Graduation rates are the highest in history for these groups. The dropout rate is at an historic low point.

Why the FUD campaign against one of our nation’s most treasured democratic institutions? It helps the competition. It makes people so desperate tat they will seek out unproven alternatives. It makes the public gullible when they hear phony claims about miracle schools, where everyone graduates and everyone gets high test scores, and everyone goes to a four-year college. No such school exists. The “miracle school” usually has a high suspension rate, a high expulsion rate, a high attrition rate, and such schools usually do not replace the kids they somehow got rid of. Some “miracle schools” have never graduated anyone because they have only elementary schools, but that doesn’t stop the claims and boasting.

It turns out that there is actually a scholar studying the phenomenon of the “the cultural production of ignorance.”

He hasn’t looked at the attack on public schools, but his work shows how propaganda may be skillfully deployed to confuse and mislead the public. Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times writes about the work of Robert Proctor of Stanford University:

“Robert Proctor doesn’t think ignorance is bliss. He thinks that what you don’t know can hurt you. And that there’s more ignorance around than there used to be, and that its purveyors have gotten much better at filling our heads with nonsense.
Proctor, a professor of the history of science at Stanford, is one of the world’s leading experts in agnotology, a neologism signifying the study of the cultural production of ignorance. It’s a rich field, especially today when whole industries devote themselves to sowing public misinformation and doubt about their products and activities.

“The tobacco industry was a pioneer at this. Its goal was to erode public acceptance of the scientifically proven links between smoking and disease: In the words of an internal 1969 memo legal opponents extracted from Brown & Williamson’s files, “Doubt is our product.” Big Tobacco’s method should not be to debunk the evidence, the memo’s author wrote, but to establish a “controversy.”

“When this sort of manipulation of information is done for profit, or to confound the development of beneficial public policy, it becomes a threat to health and to democratic society. Big Tobacco’s program has been carefully studied by the sugar industry, which has become a major target of public health advocates.”

FUD was pioneered decades ago. Now public education is the target, and privatizing it is the goal. I hope Professor Proctor turns his attention to this issue, where a well-funded propaganda campaign seeks to spread enough doubt to destroy an essential Dmocratic institution.

There is no evidence from any other nation that replacing a public system with a privatized choice system produces anything but social, economic, and racial segregation.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20140307,0,1622098.column#ixzz2vU1s5OXR

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry

This is the Man Behind the Curtain Who Loves Standardized Testing

By dianeravitch
March 10, 2014 //
75

A reader (identified by her Twitter handle as mimi@zombienation15) responds to an earlier post called “Who Loves Standardized Testing?,” where I described a panel in Austin at SXSW where both Randi Weingarten and Peter Cunningham, Arne Duncan’s former Assistant Secretary of Education for communications, agreed that it was time for a Congressional investigation of the abuses, misuses, and cost of standardized testing. I asked, if no one is in favor of what we are doing now,  “Who is the man behind the curtain who is wasting billions on testing, forcing severely ill children to take tests, making little children hate school ?” Here is this reader’s response:

*******************

The “man behind the curtain” is the negative judgmental voice of authority that is now “hard wired” into almost every man, woman, and child in America. It is the voice that has resulted from people living in fear and insecurity from chronic stress. It is the voice of people who have been functioning in a survival mode for a long time, and they have become self-absorbed, callous, and dishonest. That is the hallmark of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It is pervasive not only in the school system, but in government, business, and all phases of American society. It is a psychological plague.

We have become a society that is destroying our children. Our children cannot survive in an environment that is punitive and critical, and creates chronic stress from fear and insecurity. They are withering on the vines from lack of nurturing. Parents own fears have allowed them to become “indoctrinated” into this test obsessed data system that causes them be punitive and focus on their children’s performance, while in denial about their children’s emotional distress. They are not connecting to their children’s greatest needs. Teachers’ fear of their own job performance ratings has allowed them to become indoctrinated into a system that uses them to bully and punish children with boring mind numbing work and no creative freedom to grow independently and develop their own identity. Teachers are not connecting to children’s emotional needs. School boards and community leaders have become fearful of challenging the status quo and are impotent and in denial. They are not connecting to children’s most basic developmental needs. Government and business leaders have become enmeshed and greedy, and more concerned with their self interests. They are not connecting to children’s needs. We are a country living in fear, and the greatest price is being paid by our children.

The “man behind the curtain” represents the “weak, impotent, callous, greedy immature leaders” who lust for power and control. They are not connecting to the children’s distress, nor do they understand children’s basic developmental needs. They are using their wealth and power to gain control over all the “brainless”, “heartless”, “courage-less” submissive people in our country of OZ. These submissive parents and community members were conditioned as children to be “good and obedient and never question authority”. They were taught not to think for themselves, but only to take orders from domineering parents and teachers. Most of our leaders today are products of this oppressive dysfunctional environment that has resulted from chronic stress in the US since the 80′s. We cannot trust our leaders, but we are obedient to their abusive authority. We are struggling financially and morally, and living in chronic fear of survival because we feel insecure and threatened. Our children are endangered. We have lost our spirit.

But, we cannot afford to be idle bystanders any longer and listen to the “man behind the curtain”. We cannot continue listening to our internal judgmental voice saying “What will people think”. We cannot continue to feel depressed and helpless like most victims of bullying. It is time to step out of that helpless submissive obedient role of a victim and take action. Do not participate in bullying your children! Do not allow this psychological abuse to damage them for life. Do not let them participate in high stakes testing and obsessive test drill! Refuse the test! Demand a nurturing environment for your children. Civil Disobedience is the only immediate way to stop this insanity that is causing the US to become a pied-piper dictatorship that is stealing our children.

I have been an educational social worker for years. As others in my profession, I recognize that children’s mental and physical health cannot survive this current punitive school environment. Just like any living organism, children need a safe and nurturing place to grow. If you as a parent will not advocate for your child, who will?

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Testing

Erin Osborne: Keep Profiteers Out of the Classroom!

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2014 //
54

Erin Osborne warns in this powerful article at Salon.com that the profiteers are invading the classroom. They aren’t just selling pencils and textbooks. They are creating business ventures to make millions from controlling and directing the curriculum and testing, supplying the software and hardware that the new curriculum and testing requires.

Tellingly, she titles her article: “Keep Fox News Out of the Classroom! Rupert Murdoch, Common Core, and the Dangerous Rise of For-Profit Public Education.”

Arne Duncan spins a narrative that the Common Core standards mark a brilliant new direction for American education, in which achievement gaps will disappear as every child learns the exact same lessons in the same sequence in every state and school district.

But Osborne sees something else:

America’s most recent education reform, the Common Core State Standards, has divided teachers and parents across the United States. Whether or not the standards mark a step in the right direction for the education system, one thing is for sure. For the first time in American history, businesses are able to freely tap into the K-12 market on a large scale, and they aren’t waiting.

Make no mistake, she writes, the Common Core standards were designed to create a national market for goods and services (Joanne Weiss, tapped by Secretary Duncan to run Race to the Top, said that this was the purpose of national standards). Now, entrepreneurs are devising plans to get rich from taxpayer dollars:

How have the authors proposed we track the success of this reform? Testing, and lots of it. Along with the Common Core come two new major testing consortiums called SmarterBalanced and Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers. Forget your No. 2 pencil; these aren’t the bubble tests you remember from school but adaptive computer testing that is required two to three times a year for every student in every grade. From the SmarterBalanced website, “The full suite of summative, interim, and formative assessments is estimated to cost $27.30 per student … These costs are estimates because a sizable portion of the cost is for test administration and scoring services that will not be provided by Smarter Balanced; states will either provide these services directly or procure them from vendors in the private sector.”

Big business in education isn’t new. Pearson and McGraw-Hill have dominated the textbook market while the College Board, makers of the SAT and Advanced Placement courses, are the veritable gatekeepers to higher education. The entire U.S. education system has been valued at nearly $1.5 trillion, second only to the healthcare industry. As media mogul Rupert Murdoch said after acquiring education company Amplify (previously known as Wireless Generations), “When it comes to K-12 education, we see a $500 billion sector in the U.S. alone that is waiting desperately to be transformed by big breakthroughs that extend the reach of great teaching.”

Until the creation of Common Core, businesses have found breaking into the K-12 market very difficult. States have historically written their own curriculums and standards, buying suitable materials and textbooks as they saw fit. Creating content that was accessible to multiple states was difficult and being able to approach the districts within their tiny budget window was nearly impossible. The nuanced field of state, local and federal funding and regulations that companies are forced to navigate takes years to master and states were the ones controlling the checkbook.

From a business point of view, why go to them when you can make them come to you? Many of the people who financially aided the creation of Common Core have investments in place in companies that would do quite well with the standards implementation. By using financial clout and political connections, billionaires, not teachers, were able to influence the landscape of our education system. If states wanted a chunk of the RttT money, they had to adopt Common Core. If they adopt Common Core, they have to pay for the assessments and proprietary materials that come with it. Products that are “Common Core Aligned” have flung the door to K-12 wide open. Still not convinced Common Core is more about money than education? Check out the American Girl back-to-school accessory set children can buy, complete with a mini Common Core-aligned Pearson textbook.

Osborne notes the number of start-ups that have jumped into the education business, seeing this lucrative market, and she also notes that most start-ups don’t survive:

Given the growing emphasis on technology in the classroom plus Silicon Valley’s affinity for gadgets, there are dozens of start-ups trying to cash in on the new market. Rupert Murdoch’s company Amplify has created its own tablet and Common Core-aligned games. According to CNBC, the amount of venture capital invested in education start-ups quadrupled, from $154 million in 2003 to $630 million in 2012.

Mick Hewitt, co-founder and CEO of education start-up MasteryConnect, said earlier this year, “I would be wrong if I said the Common Core and the dollars around it haven’t driven a lot of the activity for us.” MasteryConnect raised more than $5.2 million in investments, $1.1 million of which came from the NewSchools Venture Fund, which in turn has received more than $16 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation since 2010. Hewitt does not have an education background.

Note the investment in this particular start-up by the NewSchools Venture Fund. NSVF is the epicenter of the for-profit approach to education. Its CEO Ted Mitchell was nominated by the Obama administration to become Undersecretary of Education, the second most powerful job in the Department. NSVF is not known as a friend of public education, but as a source of funding and strategy for charter chains, charter schools, and for-profit ventures.

It should not be surprising, really, that Secretary Duncan picked the head of NSVF to become #2 at the Department of Education. In 2009, he asked Joanne Weiss, who was then the CEO of NSVF to run Race to the Top. Once the Race to the Top competition was completed, Weiss then became Duncan’s chief of staff. Weiss memorably described the rationale for the Common Core this way in a blog for the Harvard Business Review:

The development of common standards and shared assessments radically alters the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional development, and formative assessments. Previously, these markets operated on a state-by-state basis, and often on a district-by-district basis. But the adoption of common standards and shared assessments means that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets where the best products can be taken to scale.

This was certainly the first time in history that the U.S. Department of Education created a program whose purpose was to stimulate new markets for entrepreneurs and investment.

Erin Osborne is an active member of the Education Bloggers Network, a group of bloggers who support public education. These were her first reflections on the recent conference of the Network for Public Education.

Categories Common Core, Education Industry, For-Profit, U.S. Department of Education

Researcher: Most “Common Core-Aligned” Textbooks Are Shams

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2014 //
95

Professor Bill Schmidt of Michigan State University told the Education Writers Association that most textbooks claiming o be aligned to the Common Core are not. The publishers slapped a sticker on the book and changed very little or nothing. Most textbooks he reviewed were a “sham,” sold by “snake oil salesmen.”

“Hoping to boost their share of a $9 billion annual market, many publishers now boast that their textbooks are “common-core aligned” and so can help spur the dramatic shifts in classroom instruction intended by the new standards for English/language arts and math.
But in a Feb. 21 presentation of his research at a seminar in Los Angeles hosted by the Education Writers Association, William Schmidt, a professor of statistics and education at Michigan State University in East Lansing, dismissed most purveyors of such claims as “snake oil salesmen” who have done little more than slap shiny new stickers on the same books they’ve been selling for years.

“Mr. Schmidt, who also co-directs the university’s Education Policy Center, and his team recently analyzed about 700 textbooks from 35 textbook series for grades K-8 that are now being used by 60 percent of public school children in the United States. Of those that purported to be aligned with the new standards, he said, some were “page by page, paragraph by paragraph” virtually identical to their old, pre-common-core versions.

“University of Southern California professor Morgan Polikoff, meanwhile, reached a similar conclusion after analyzing seven 4th grade math textbooks used in Florida. Despite publishers’ claims, the books were “only modestly aligned to the common core” and “systematically failed to reach the higher levels of cognitive demand” called for in the new standards, Mr. Polikoff said in a presentation to the EWA.”

Categories Common Core, Education Industry

Cuomo Distorts Charter School Facts and Issues, Gets a Grade of F

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2014 //
33
A researcher who has followed the issues in New York state closely submitted the following analysis of Governor Andrew Cuomo’s views on charter schools. The researcher has requested anonymity; he has documented his review. The sources are nonpartisan and unimpeachable.  This is recommended reading for all journalists and citizens. Forgive the formatting.

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Just the other day, we saw two competing visions for public education clash in Albany. Mayor Bill de

Blasio spoke at a rally in support of a real plan for universal pre-K for children. Governor Andrew Cuomo

spoke at a rally in support of the continued expansion and extra funding of charter schools.

The evidence supports only one of these visions. The evidence shows that the charter sector does not do

a better job than public schools, even narrowing our frame of reference to test scores. On the other hand,

the evidence is clear that universal pre-K is the most effective educational policy lever in helping to close

the achievement gap.

Let’s take a look at Governor Cuomo’s remarks to see how well he met the 11th-12th

grade Speaking and Listening Common Core Standards, of which he is so fond.

How well did he perform on “presentation of knowledge and ideas?”

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Cuomo’s claim: “this is the most important civics lesson you will learn, because this is democracy and

this is how you make your voice heard. And we are here today to tell you that we stand with you. You are

not alone; we will save charter schools.”

The facts: The rally for charter schools was not a function of democracy. Charter schools cancelled

school for the day and bussed parents and students to Albany. Public school children remained in school.

Democracy would have required that both charter AND public schools be cancelled for the day and that

busses be provided for both charter AND public school students and parents. Only then would we know if

more parents and children support or oppose the continued expansion of charter school. Only then would

the voice of the people have been heard. But New York City Department of Education Regulation D-130

prohibits such blatant political activity “if such visit may disrupt the educational school environment.”

Charter schools do not, of course, follow such rules, even though they receive public money. If this

were not enough anti-democratic behavior the Daily News reported that “sources with knowledge of the

situation say Cuomo urged charter school advocates to turn out for the pro-charter rally.”

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Cuomo’s claim: “education is not about the districts and not about the pensions and not about the unions

and not about the lobbyists and not about the PR firms – education is about the students, and the students

come first.”

The facts: It is Cuomo who is influenced by lobbyists at the expense of the true interests of students.

Recent investigative reporting uncovered that “Cuomo’s reelection bid has so far received nearly

$400,000 from a cadre of wealthy supporters of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academy Charter School

network, according to an updated tally of newly-released campaign filings. Some money has even come

from Moskowitz’s political action committee, Great Public Schools, which has given $65,000 to Cuomo

since 2011… By one tally of the 2014 filings, Cuomo racked up at least $800,000 in donations from

27 bankers, real estate executives, business executives, philanthropists and advocacy groups who have

flocked to charter schools and other education causes in recent years.”

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Cuomo’s claims: “We know that too many public schools are failing. Over 200 failing schools – 6%

grade level for reading, 5% grade level for math.

The facts: We know no such thing. We do know that the Board of Regents changes cut scores at

will to make it appear that students and schools are failing. For example from 2011 until 2013 out of

286 possible point combinations on the English Language Arts Regents exam an average of 74 point

combinations resulted in a passing grade. Then, in June of 2013, the number of point combinations

leading to a passing grade was dramatically lowered by 23%. Since then an average of 63 point

combinations out of 286 leads to a passing grade. We also know that New York State’s identification of

failing (a.k.a. “Priority”) schools is statistical nonsense. One researcher found that “Priority” schools have

150% more free lunch students, 300% more Black students, 175% more Hispanic students, and 200%

more English Language Learners than schools in “Good Standing.” We don’t have very many failing

schools. We do have many students who need and deserve more support. Which brings us to Cuomo’s

next claim.

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Cuomo’s claim: “The education industry has said the same thing for decades: more money, and more

money, and more money, and it will change. We spend more money per pupil than any state in the nation;

we’re number 32 in results. It’s not just about putting more money in the public school system, it’s trying

something new and that’s what charter schools are all about.”

The facts: The irony here is that charter schools in New York City, especially those that belong to the

charter chains that showed up to protest, spend much more per student than public schools. One analysis

has shown that, compared to similar public schools, Success Academy spends $2,072 more per student

and KIPP spends a whopping $5,359 more per student. New York State’s own data show that the “Good

Standing” schools receive 75% more foundation aid per student than the “Priority” schools. Cuomo’s

numbers just don’t add up.

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Cuomo’s claim: “Now not every charter school has been great, but overall they have been a great success

– like Success Academy in the South Bronx. The third best results in the state; give yourselves a round

of applause. That’s why 50,000 parents are on the waiting list, and our point today is parents deserve a

choice.”

The facts: Success Academy has become a lightning rod in this debate. So let’s review the numbers

on their Harlem schools, the only schools in the Success Academy network that have been around for

more than a couple of years. Last year’s 7th grade class at Harlem Success Academy 1 had a 52.1%

attrition rate since 2006-07. Last year’s 6th grade class had a 45.2% attrition rate since 2006-07. The

data show that this attrition is selective. For example, the attrition rate of special education students and

English Language Learners is over 60% in some cohorts in the space of just 3 years. All test outcomes

are meaningless when a school gets rid of so many kids. The Harlem Success Academies had an average

17.5% suspension rate as compared to an overall 8% in Harlem public schools. This is another way to

encourage challenging students to leave.

Harlem Success Academies have 50% fewer English Language Learners, 40% fewer special education

students overall, 1,400% fewer of the highest need special education students (and no this is not a typo),

15% fewer free lunch students, and an economic need index (a measure of students in temporary housing

and/or who receive public assistance) that is 35% lower than nearby public schools.

Even so barely more than half of their students were “proficient” on the last English exam and their

growth scores lagged peer schools by over 10 percentage points. They scored in the 39th percentile on

English exam growth for their overall student population and in the 21st percentile on English exam

growth for the students who began with scores in the lowest 1/3 of students citywide. The media likes to

tout Success Academy’s Math exam scores which were a bit better (and are easier to test prep for than the

writing required on English exams). But again, when you kick out students who get low test scores it is

not surprising that test scores go up.

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Cuomo’s claim: “I am committed to ensuring charter schools have the financial capacity, the physical

space, and the government support to thrive and to grow.”

The facts: de Blasio has already stated that he will charge only those charter schools who can afford it

rent fees when they use public space. Success Academy for example had “at least $30.9 million in total,

end-of-year assets.” Here is a report on what happens to public schools when charter schools, using

examples from the Success Academy network, are given physical space in public buildings.

“P.S. 123 had already struggled during its first co-location, with Success Academy Harlem 2 (SAH2),

that began in 2008. Three years later, Success Academy Harlem 5 (SAH5) entered the building, taking

SAH2’s place (which had to move to another location because of, ironically, lack of space), located on

the third floor. Because of this co-location, P.S. 123 has lost three rooms and several programs, and is

slated to lose three additional classrooms in September of 2012.One of the key losses was a GED program

that catered to adults 19 years old or older, which provided the school with the opportunity to educate

both children and adult community members in the same facility. The school also lost the use of their

computer room and had the library divided into cubicles, which limits student’s library time. The school

lost its SAVE room (see footnote #41), which are required by state law, and for P.S. 123 means disruptive

students simply remain in the class. In addition, students do not have enough time to take their state

exams. Students in the lower grades will have to either go outside or sit in the auditorium while the older

students are taking their exams. Due to the limited space, only certain classes at P.S. 123 are permitted

to use the gym. As a result, the school does not have a structured physical education program. There

is not enough room for the students to have an art program. The school is unable to achieve the 12:1:1

classroom ratio for students who have an Individualized Education Program. Speech and occupational

therapy are conducted in cubicles instead separate rooms. Additionally, students in Kindergarten through

Second grade have lunch at 10:30 a.m. SAH5 has air conditioning in all their, classrooms but few of the

air conditioners in P.S. 123 work properly.”

“Despite the fact that SAH4 has not yet reached full capacity, observers found significant inequities

in space between the school and STEM during a walk-through of the two schools… STEM [Science

Technology Engineering and Math Institute, a public school] has one science lab compared to SAH4’s

three rooms. STEM has no art room —only an art cart (Figure 1]. On the other hand, SAH4’s art room is

state-of-the-art [Figure 2]… STEM has a shared one-quarter of a classroom that had previously been for

janitorial use. It has been revamped for the use of both speech and ELL services. At times, these classes

are conducted at the same time, making it difficult for students to focus. SAH4 has its own dedicated

speech room, which is used fewer than five hours a week…STEM has a one-quarter classroom that

serves 20 self-contained special-education students, despite the fact that the classroom has capacity for

only ten students [see Figure 3]. Occupational and physical therapy for STEM students is provided in the

library or hallway. SAH4 has its own Dance Room [see Figure 4]… At one point, STEM’s Kindergarten

through 2th grade classrooms were located in the basement. Unfortunately, the basement provided only

a janitorial toilet. Since STEM students are not permitted to use the SAH4 bathrooms and are prohibited

from SAH4’s assigned floors, STEM students were required to walk from the basement to the second

floor, and then back down a different set of stairs to the first floor STEM bathroom, so as to not cross

through SAH4 space.”

“SAH2 has four science labs. P.S. 30 has one science lab. Their state-of-the-art science lab, renovated

in 1990s after a grant from Mayor David Dinkins, was lost to SAH2. In only half of a classroom, P.S. 30

has seven service providers who furnish occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, hearing

services, and tutoring [Figure 7]. SAH2 has a speech room, two psychology rooms, an occupational

therapy room, seven administrative offices, and a generic conference room. In addition, SAH2 has its own

karate room, chess room and block room [Figures 8 through 11].”

“Specifically, with the HSA [Harlem Success Academy] expansion, the students at P.S./M.S. 149 have

lost: A fully equipped music room, instruments and a program; A state-mandated SAVE room where

students who are disrupting their classrooms have a chance to work on their studies without disrupting

other students; A computer lab, capable of servicing an entire class at a time; Individual rooms for

occupational and physical therapy (a speech teacher is servicing students in the library); and The English

Language Learners (ELL) classroom (student are sometimes are serviced in the library or non-teaching

spaces). Additionally, hallways in the school are extremely overcrowded, and the middle school students

are prohibited from using the stairwell that exists directly across from their classrooms — which is very

problematic during fire drills, and is a safety hazard.”

“Already co-located with Fredrick Douglass Academy II, in the summer of 2012 Wadleigh was preparing

to be joined by a Success Academy Harlem West (SAHW) charter school in the fall. During the

negotiations for the co-location, Wadleigh was promised 29 classrooms, but received only 20. The school

lost rooms for small group tutoring and administration, and guidance counselors have been forced to

hold confidential conversations with students behind partitions. Upgrades for the incoming SAHW —

including painting doors and walls —began while Wadleigh students were attempting to prepare for their

Regents exam, and administrators were given a short deadline for packing up materials in rooms that were

to be taken over by the SAHW in the fall, despite the fact that school was in session and would be so for

another month.”

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The evidence is clear. Cuomo has misrepresented the evidence and the facts. He receives a grade of well- below proficient on the following Common Core Standards: CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.1a  (“Come to discussions prepared, having read and researched material under study; explicitly draw on that preparation

by referring to evidence from texts and other research on the topic or issue to stimulate a thoughtful,

well-reasoned exchange of ideas. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.1c. Propel conversations by posing and

responding to questions that probe reasoning and evidence; ensure a hearing for a full range of positions

on a topic or issue; clarify, verify, or challenge ideas and conclusions; and promote divergent and creative

perspectives. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.1d Respond thoughtfully to diverse perspectives; synthesize

comments, claims, and evidence made on all sides of an issue; resolve contradictions when possible; and

determine what additional information or research is required to deepen the investigation or complete

the task. CCSS.ELA-Literacy.SL.11-12.4 Present information, findings, and supporting evidence,

conveying a clear and distinct perspective, such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning, alternative

or opposing perspectives are addressed, and the organization, development, substance, and style are

appropriate to purpose, audience, and a range of formal and informal tasks.

It is time for Governor Cuomo to go back to school.

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Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Privatization

A Public School Teacher Explains How His School Differs from Eva’s Charters

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2014 //
20

Arthur Goldstein has been teaching high school students in New York City for 29 years. He has a blog called NYC Educator. This is his reaction to the charter flap in New York City, caused when Mayor de Blasio approved 39 out of 49 charter applications (some of the new charters will be given space in public school buildings, displacing public school students), approved three new charters for Success Academy (Eva Moskowitz’s chain), but turned down three of Eva’s applications.

I’ve been chapter leader of Francis Lewis High School for almost five years now. For my money, we are a great school. We offer kids an incredible variety of activities, including academic and sports teams, and the largest and most successful JROTC program in the country.

The biggest crisis we faced when I got this job was overcrowding. It came upon us gradually, and became very scary when we realized there was a breaking point. After all, there was nothing Mayor Mike Bloomberg enjoyed better than closing large schools like ours, and we needed to act before he got a chance.

If I were Eva Moskowitz, perhaps I’d have closed the school, rented buses, and shipped all our students to Albany to protest. (Isn’t it odd she can finance such a trip, pay herself 450K per annum, and still be horrified at the prospect of paying rent?) Even though neither I nor my colleagues know anyone half as rich as the hedge-funders who support Moskowitz, we’d surely have generated a lot of publicity.

For example, we’d be in abject violation of the law, as we have no right to unilaterally close our school. While NBC4 may fawn over the work Eva Moskowitz does, I can’t imagine support for any such trip is merited. For one thing, a lot of our students might not understand why they were being deprived of school, even if we made a show out of trying to teach them on the bus.

My students, for example, know very little English, having arrived here quite recently. I’m very proud that our school accepts and keeps virtually every English language learner that crosses our threshold. We also have a wide variety of special needs students, including alternate assessment students who will never receive Regents diplomas. Though we have programs to help these kids find and maintain work, their results are counted against us in our graduation rates.

How many of those kids do you suppose are enrolled in the Moskowitz Success Academies?

A public school trip to Albany on a school day would certainly draw us a lot of press, and cause us quite a bit of trouble. As chapter leader, whenever a teacher has a disciplinary issue, I represent that teacher before the principal. There’d likely be little of that at first, since any principal who approved such a trip would be removed instantly.

Even when the principal were replaced, it might not be that much work for a chapter leader. Gross negligence can be grounds for the 3020a process, which seeks to terminate the employment of teachers, and those hearings take place outside the building. Luckily for me, the only termination hearing I’d likely have to attend would be my own.

In the real world, when our school faced a crisis, we chose to fight it in the press. We got our school covered in the Times, in the Post, in the News, and in local papers. Eventually Bloomberg and Klein personally acknowledged us on network news, and we made an agreement to reverse our overcrowding.

Of course, we were fighting for survival. Moskowitz still has many schools that aren’t closing, and several set to open despite her most recent setback. She’s got corporate supporters with deep pockets, and a media that can’t even be bothered with cursory research.

We were working on a shoestring, and fighting to maintain our school as one of the best in the city, or even the country. We never for a single second considered using our students as pawns.

We’re here to help our students. The talking heads can jabber about what they like, but we are the real deal. We don’t play games with our data and we don’t toss out kids we find inconvenient. We keep those kids and help them.

That’s our job. Eva Moskowitz, from everything I see and hear, has another job altogether. And Governor Cuomo, while relentlessly cutting public school budgets all over the state, sees fit to stand publicly and support it. If he’s really a “student lobbyist,” he ought to work for all students, rather than only those subsidized by the wealthy and powerful friends of Eva Moskowitz.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization
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